The Summer Lull

 I haven't posted much lately, have I?  I really haven't been doing anything blog-related.  I'm between projects in every area of my crafty life, and have been focusing on other things instead - like refinishing a couple of tables in my house, cleaning up the yard in preparation for bulk brush pickup day in a couple of weeks, and shuffling around some of the artwork that hangs in my house to freshen things up around there.  

I have also done a little bit of SCA-related stuff lately, but nothing major - just some small mending and repairs to old costumes, and some cleanup and reorganization of my costume closet and my camping gear.  I did also get a new air mattress and a new fancy rechargeable air pump for camping, and I'm going to be replacing my old camp chair next week. 

I do also have some new costumey/crafty projects coming up in the next few weeks that I'll post about: 

• I'm still working on a hand-sewn Viking serk that I started in like May and haven't been working on like at all this summer (oops)
• There are a few new weaving projects I'll be posting about once I get them done, which is dependent on when my new thread arrives in the mail
• There may or may not be a new Regency dress in the works.  In fact, there might be TWO of them, I'm just not sure yet 
• I did make a birthday present (piece of garb) for a friend recently, which I've been dying to show you, but I have to wait until I actually give it to said friend before I post about it 

Just in case anyone actually cares, here's what's been taking up the bulk of my time this summer: 

I got this corner table for free from someone's curbside trash in 2017, and I JUST got around to stripping the paint off it and refinishing it so I could use it.  Whew!  It took me about a month's worth of actual working time to get all that paint off (three badly-applied coats of paint plus a primer coat that had soaked deeply into the wood). 

It lives in my bedroom now, and so far, I haven't piled any laundry on it. 

This little side table/stand is an actual antique, given to me by a friend several years ago, and she believes it's from the early 1900s, possibly the late 1800s (I honestly have no idea; there's a maker's signature underneath it but I couldn't make it out in order to look it up).  

The finish was badly damaged, but the structure was completely sound, so all I did was strip it and re-stain it.  This one took me about two days to do from start to finish.  After working on that corner table for so long, this was a nice, easy, fast project, and really fun. It lives in my living room.  

Anyway, I'll be back in a couple of weeks when I have some actual sewing/weaving projects to talk about.  

SCA: Heraldic Table Runner For the New Sprezzatura Table

 Once the table for Sprezzatura's camp was complete I wanted a nice bit of something to go over the top of it.  I briefly considered painting the household's heraldry onto the top of the table, but the table will be covered with food and drink and all sorts of other stuff at events, so I decided to do make a fabric table runner - it will be easier to see, make the table look nicer, and be washable in case of spills.  

The fabric is cotton broadcloth, with cotton/poly bias tape edging. The appliqué is quilting cotton, backed with fusible interfacing, and the whole thing is backed with more blue broadcloth so that the back of the appliqué is hidden and protected. 

I haven't done appliqué in about 8 years, and I've never done it on my current sewing machine.  The machine did NOT want to cooperate. It's not perfect - I've done better in the past - but for not having done it in so long and having to practically alligator-wrestle this sewing machine into doing what I wanted, I think it came out pretty well.  I'm satisfied with it. 

SCA: Table For Sprezzatura

I refinished a table! 

Earlier this year, I had grand ideas about building some sort of Medieval-ish wooden table for my household's camp.  Until now, we have used a plastic folding table in the center of our pavilion for people to gather around and eat and hang out; but I wanted to make something nicer and somewhat period-ish. Unfortunately, budget and lumber prices kept me from starting the project I had in mind. 

But then, at the beginning of August, I found this little wooden table for free on the curb in my neighborhood: 

It's in great shape construction-wise, a perfect size for our camp (48" x 32", a little shorter than our plastic table, but wider), and the design, though a bit generically Pottery Barn-farmhouse-y, is sort of vaguely Medieval in style and resembles many trestle tables I've seen in artwork from the 1300-1400s, so I think it works.  Ten-foot rule, right? Or as my friend Kate says, it'll look just fine when seen from a galloping horse.    

The only problem with it was that the previous owner (?) stained it with black stain...and they did a horrible job of it. The stain was applied unevenly and not wiped off in between coats, so there are visible brush marks and places where the brush marks overlap, and even areas where it's obvious the stain pooled on the wood and just congealed there.  Also, they sanded off the original finish before staining it, and the sanding was done with a sandpaper that was so heavy and coarse that it marred the wood in places, and half the sanding marks are against the grain.  Ugh! 

Left: uneven and blotchy stain; 
right: sanding and brush marks against the grain

Enter: two cans of Easy Off oven cleaner.  

That's right, oven cleaner.  I saw this trick on Instagram, and then read some blogs about the process and watched some videos, and then tried it out on this table.  You basically spray the entire piece down with oven cleaner, let it sit for about half an hour, scrub it down thoroughly with soap and water, and then hose it off with water.  (The soap and water neutralize the cleaner chemicals so that you're not washing anything harmful into your yard, just dirty water).  Et voila: most of the stain came right off!  

this was after the first treatment; after the 
second pass it came almost completely clean! 

 

The rest of it came off pretty easily with the sander, and I was able to smooth out the rough sanding marks the previous DIYer left behind.  After it was all sanded, I cleaned off the entire piece and coated it with wood conditioner to prep the wood for staining.  

While the black stain that was originally on the table was nice, I wanted something lighter and warmer.  I have an "espresso" stain that is way too dark, and a "Jacobean" that is a nice dark brown but it's got weird green undertones.  I love my walnut stain, but I wanted darker, so I ended up putting two coats of the walnut on the wood, and it came out really nicely, I think: 

After the staining was complete, I coated the whole table in polyurethane to protect the finish.  

Tada!  New table.  The whole project took me about a month and a half, working on weekend mornings before it got too hot outside, and a little bit here and there during the week in my spare time. 

always wear your PPEs, people. 

SCA: Camp Furniture Makeover

 So, this folding camp chair was pretty cool.  I bought  a regular old nylon camp chair at Walmart in 2019, removed the nylon covers, spray-painted the frame and the tray, and replaced the covers with pretty fabric, to make it look a little less modern and make it blend in with the wooden camp furniture a little better. Brown spray paint isn't going to fool anyone; but when you place the chair amongst all the wooden furniture, it at least looks a little less plastic-y.  

However, in March, the stitching on one corner of the back piece on this chair gave out and nearly dropped me on the ground at an event - I ended up shoring it up with safety pins in order to keep using it.  

Time for a new cover!  This time it's made from some dark green cotton damask upholstery fabric I had in my stash: 

(the back is the same as the seat and arms; the light is just making it look weird)

Hopefully this will hold me at least another four years.  Maybe by then I'll have built myself a wooden folding chair.  HA!  Yeah, right.  

Making Over A Camp Chair

There's a big push in the barony lately to reduce the appearance of mundanity.  That means finding ways to obscure the modern and blend it with the historical - things like phones, coolers, tents, chairs, mugs, tennis shoes, etc.  In one of those things I found an opportunity to do my part:

BEFORE

This is my camp chair.  It's brand new, really comfy, and even has a little table that flips up from the side, with a cup holder in it.  Neat!  It is, however, glaringly modern with its metal frame and nylon upholstery.  Fortunately, I've solved this problem before.

The first order of business was to remove the upholstery from the chair and spray paint the frame.  I wiped down the frame to clean off any dust, then sprayed it with an automotive self-etching metal primer (2 colors, not that it matters).  Once that was dry, I sprayed it with a brown spray paint.

PRIMING THE FRAME

I painted the plastic flip-up tray with dark gray all-purpose primer, then the same brown spray paint. I clearcoated the entire tray with Polycrylic to seal the plastic.  With the metal primer, the paint won't flake off the frame, but the plastic might flake or chip if not protected.


Next I made copies of the seat and back pieces that I removed from the chair in a blue polyester upholstery fabric with a swirly Italianate design on it.  I made these double-thickness, the seams reinforced with two rows of stitching on the inside, and the seat 5" longer than the original, so that the ends could be wrapped around the frame and sewn in by hand (which was a big pain in the butt!)


This chair had armrest pads, too, which I copied, and used the velcro and interior padding harvested from the original pads to close.  And yes, the cloth seat and back will be just as strong as the original nylon pieces - the red chair I made over in 2013 held up just fine until the frame itself broke.

AFTER

Now, does that look like a period piece of furniture?  HELL no.  But it looks less modern, and when placed under a tent with wooden poles, next to wooden chairs, it kind of blends in because of the frame color.  It's by no means going to fool anyone, but every little effort helps the overall ambiance.  I do need to re-do the back piece:  see how it looks all twisted?  I tried to cut my fabric as straight as I could, but I was cutting it out of an old dress, and I think I got this piece a little on the bias.  I'll fix it. 

What's Next?  

I'm working on a little painted wooden box right now, and on some embroidery on a new Viking apron dress that I made last month.  Show you soon!

Re-Organizing the Sewing Room A Bit

Playing the sliding-tiles game with furniture in my house again:  

Problem: 

• a giant armoire full of towels and sheets in my bedroom, which was in my way, and was also inaccessible to my roommate when I was asleep in there
• a mostly-empty hall closet
• some slapdash shelves on a corner wall in my craft room, full of boxes of fabric and supplies, and  surrounded by piles of same on the floor

Solution: 

1. I removed the shelves in the craft room and put them up in the hall closet, and moved all the linens into the hall closet where they're accessible to everyone
2. I moved the armoire to that corner of the craft room, and re-organized the boxes and supplies into it

And then...

A friend and I swapped dressers over the weekend - my small one for her large one (she wanted to use two smaller dressers in her daughter's room instead of one huge one).  And so this came home with me on Saturday: 

Ikea HEMNES

Most of my fabric stash had been stored in sixteen of those white plastic Ikea (SNALIS, discontinued) boxes (like the two on top of this dresser in the pic), stacked in/on top of that long, low, black shelving unit under the window in the pic (it'll be re-homed soon).  The contents of all but those two boxes fit neatly into the four main drawers in this dresser, and I got all of my small scraps into the smaller drawers at the top.  

So, what do I do with fourteen 5-gal plastic boxes?  I'm not sure yet.  They'll probably end up holding craft supplies in the closet in this room, or full of small tools and things in the garage.  

Cross-posted from my house/furniture blog at pushingfurniture.blogspot.com

Saving A Battered, Old Chair

THIS CHAIR has seen better days:

(all of these pics are halfway through sanding, to show just how much *crud* is in/on this wood)

Don't get me wrong, it's a good chair.  It's extremely well-made, sturdy, and not a joint is out of place, though it looks horrible.  What you're looking at is several years' worth of

• rain/water damage
• sun exposure/oxidation
• corroded varnish
• sweaty fighter butts (ewww)

Not only was the finish shot, but the wood was so swollen with weather and age in places that the chair wouldn't fully open OR close...rendering a really nice chair completely useless. 

I'll be honest, I was dreading the prospect of sanding allllll those pieces individually.  I guess the chair, or the Universe, or the Powers-That-Be heard me - because I could NOT get this thing apart to save my life.  I tried every tool at my disposal, got friends to help me, even tried to grind the hardware out, but it appears to have been made of naquadah-enhanced unobtanium, and sealed with black magic.  @_@  In the end I had to sand and stain this thing WHILE FULLY ASSEMBLED.  I'm here to tell you that was a bitch. 

BUT I got it done: 

(I could no longer feel my hands after this...and it still needed more sanding)

Here's the first coat of stain, applied very, very carefully, with a small brush and a lot of paper towels.  The chair is solid oak, and pretty well weathered and seasoned; still, I didn't want to chance the stain swelling the wood and undoing all the work I put into buffing down the seat pieces so that this thing would move properly again.  Rubbing stain into the wood with paper towels keeps too much stain from soaking in and swelling the wood, and it also gives you a LOT more control over the depth and amount of color.  

(oooh, aahhh)

After two more coats of stain, and several coats of spray poly-acrylic (for a low-tack, matte-sheen clearcoat, rather than a polyurethane which could stick in hot weather), it was finally done:

(The dark area of the back piece was severely stained, deep enough that I couldn't surface clean it out, or even sand it off the wood.  It's the same on the reverse of the piece; in fact, it's worse on the other side.  I have no idea what caused it, but, this was the best I could do with it). 

Sir John's and his lady Bridget's devices painted on the center of the back rest, in acrylic paint, and heavily clear-coated to prevent scratching.

Tada! 

Little Boxes Made of Ticky-Tacky

I made a box for my friend, Simona!

It's not exactly heraldic, more...heraldy.  I've decided that's the new term. :)  Elements of her device worked into the box, without being the actual device itself. Heraldish.

It's made of pine plywood harvested from a large shipping crate that I picked up for free from the warehouse at the company where Simona's husband works.  I had a LOAD of fun knocking the crate apart with a big mallet...

for a while, anyway. 

I'm working on a smaller one for myself as well - should be done and up on the blog this time next week.



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So, About That Chair...

You know, this morning on my way to work I wrote this entire post in limerick form.  Thankfully, before I got to a keyboard I thought, "Hm, maybe I'd better have some coffee and think this through."
You're welcome.

Before! 

After! 

• spray paint (paint + prime in one, and also a spray polycrylic clear-coat)
• new fabric  (scraps from an old tablecloth and runner set, which is why the design isn't centered)

Ta-da!  Easy. 

This chair was given to me by a friend, and I very much prefer it over the "regular" folding camp chairs that everyone tries to disguise with slipcovers made of thrift store bedsheets (to which: ew; ymmv).  Far more comfortable to sit in, doesn't hurt my back, easier to get out of, has never broken beneath me and dropped me on my ass (which always seems to happen in front of cute guys, have you noticed that?)  

One day I will have pretty wooden chairs with pretty throw cushions.  But for now, I'm loving this thing SO very much.  :) 

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Pushing Furniture?

Wait, which blog is this?  Maybe this just one of those crossover TV episodes where a detective from the cop show turns up on the paranormal investigation show to help the FBI agents or something.  Welcome to my DIY and home decor blog!  Hee hee.

Today's post is all about the campsite - I've got camp decor on the brain this week, as I wait for my new tent to show up at my house.  I really can't tell you how excited I am to finally have a tent that's not a giant, bright blue, nylon square, lol.  I have several things for my campsite that I just need to finish or put together:

This is the bed I built for myself at home a few years ago.  It's a queen size, and I don't use it anymore because I have a king sized mattress now.  I'm embarrassed to admit, I never thought to use it for SCA purposes until a friend asked me why I didn't.   I built it with moving in mind, so the entire thing breaks down and packs flat.  The hardware is modern, but it's not visible from the outside.

All it needs is some new, short, corner posts.  I'm going to keep using my air mattress on top of it for the time being, until I can figure out an affordable mattress solution;  but I have all the bedding I need to make it look nice.

This is a cooler cover with a padded seat that I made last year, with some eggcrate foam I had laying around after another project, and about $4 worth of clearance drapery fabric.  I got the idea from a good friend of mine.  I would really like to make more of these - for my other cooler, and also some that are purely decorative, to throw over my plastic storage tubs that I use to pack my things in when I travel.  (I've been just throwing sarongs, skirts, and lengths of cloth over them).

Pinterest

Vasilii and I have a red box like this made for us by a friend.  Eventually I'd like to paint our arms on the outside (and how fortunate that both of our arms use red, black, and white as our colors).  For now, though, I'd like to install some horizontal wooden cleats on the inside walls like in this picture, so that we can put a box or storage tray in there, too, and expand the box's function.

This little guy I picked up for $5 at Goodwill and reupholstered last year.  Um...just ignore the 18th century Queen Anne legs.  One day I'll replace those, and upholster it in something snazzier (this is just a scrap of red upholstery velvet; I'd really like to tuft it and put something shiny on it).

I'm not sure I'll keep camping with this, though. At least, not in the rain.  I brought it to Gulf War in March, and I was constantly cleaning mud off of it.

a tutorial! 

This is next, though, before I do ANYTHING else. I am TIRED of ugly-ass camp chairs.

Since I do build and fix up furniture, I do plan to build some nice wooden SCA furniture for us to use, but at the moment I have neither the money nor the shop space to do so.  For the time being, some camp chair covers made from Goodwill sheets and duvet covers will cost me about ten dollars and maybe a couple of hours of sewing.

Next camp post:  accessories! 

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Bits 'N' Pieces For the Camp

Not that I even have a whole camp thing going on just yet.  I will, but grand plans for pavilions and things can wait - for today, I have a wee bit of furniture re-upholstery to show you. Two wee bits, actually.

Before:  a little footstool, $5 at Goodwill.  (They threw the ugly in for free). 

After: A $2 scrap of upholstery velvet I bought from a friend's fabric sale, and some gimp left over from a previous project.  

No, it isn't remotely period. But it's a cute, and useful little thing.  The legs won't even be noticed amongst all the other stuff that I hope will eventually make up one hell of an awesome, lush campsite decor.

Before: Look, it's a 15th century plastic beer cooler!  No, wait...

After: Now it's an ottoman!  Storage and extra seating, how about that?  Props to my friend Kate, from whom I stole the idea. :) 










I do plan to build a pavilion this Winter (to have ready by Gulf Wars in March), but first there's all manner of little things like this to take care of:  cushions and chair covers and tables, oh, boy! 


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